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Medical Emergency in Thailand -- Triple Lutz Report 494 · Financial Survival Network

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  Welcome. I'm Carrie Leutz. This is Financial Survival Network and it's time
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  for another Triple Lutz Report. And this is Triple Lutz Report for ninety four.
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  So as you may have known if you listen to a few there were
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  more recent shows. I'm in Thailand. I'm living the life of a digital
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  nomad. It's been a real blast. I've met some incredible people here.
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  Thai people really are the most gracious, warmest, friendliest people you'll ever come
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  into contact with. I spent time with somebody who's an FSN community member.
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  I met his wife, their friends, and wound up hanging out with them
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  for a number of days. It's been great. So fast forward, have
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  a medical emergency. It's what you always dread when you travel, and I
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  have traveled a lot. The worst I ever wound up doing was going to
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  a doctor's office because I had a cold or a sinus infection something like that.
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  And that was in the United States. But here I am in Thailand
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  in a city that is south of the Bangkok Pataya, and you know,
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  I'm hanging out here with my friends and I noticed, like I'm starting to
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  get something's happening to my eye. And I've had a lot of issues with
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  my eyes, never vision threatening, thank goodness, but over the years had
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  RK that's refractive surgery that caused me to become extremely far sighted, to have
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  what it's called higher order aberration, meaning halos and things like that like glare
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  at night. And I've basically addressed it all. I've been fine. Well,
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  you know, many many years ago, I had a retinal tear,
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  small retinal tear on the very very peripheral of my retina at it laser surgery
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  thirty years ago, not thinking anything about it. Now fast forward to a
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  few years ago. I have this thing called a vitreous gel detachment. And
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  your eye is filled with a vitreous gel. And when you get to my
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  advanced age, you know, mid sixties, it's not unusual to have a
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  detachment. In fact, you could have it as early as fifty years old.
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  So I had into my left eye a few years ago. I went
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  right off to the ophthalmologist. You know, I was seeing floaters, flashes,
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  and what they do is they can't really see the vitreous detachment, but
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  they diagnosed it by the process of elimination. He told me, then,
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  look, you're having a vitreous gel detachment and it should go away in two
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  weeks. And the giveaway is the fact you're having this big floater. And
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  I've had floaters before, they fall to the bottom of the eye and not
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  really your brain filters them out. Sure enough, two weeks later it was
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  gone. Didn't think anything of it. So here I am in Thailand and
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  I see this thing happen again. I figure, it's just the vitreous gel
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  detachment. Let's see what happens. And the first day or two nothing happened.
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  But then a couple of days ago, three days ago, I start
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  walking down the street and it's like, I think, wow, that's weird.
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  It looks like black ink is on my eye. And then after a
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  few minutes it dissolves. I think, well, that's interesting. We have
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  to keep an eye on that. I don't know, maybe I got something
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  in my eye on the street here. And then a few hours later happens
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  again, and I realized that this ink is actually blood, and I'm freaked
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  out. I'm not sure what to do. I'm freaked out my eyes.
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  You know, it's one thing. You hurt your knee, you hurt your
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  ankle, you break a finger, and whatever, you deal with it,
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  but your eyes or your eyes. And you know, I'm sitting around a
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  few hours in my room figuring out what to do, and it's happening periodically.
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  So finally I call up my friend and I said, look, actually
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  I think I texted him, said having this problem, what do you think
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  I should do? And one of the guys is English, he said,
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  well, you know, I told him I talk. I put in a
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  call to my friend in the States, but it was five o'clock or four
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  o'clock in the morning there, and he wasn't going to be able to help
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  me for a couple hours. I didn't really want to call him and wake
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  him up. And so the next thing I know other thy friend her grandfather
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  is an at themlogist at one of the most prestigious hospitals in Bangkok, and
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  she calls him up and he says, go immediately to the branch of the
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  Bangkok Hospital that's near here, and it's two miles from my hotel. So
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  I take a taxi over. It took forever to get there, and you
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  know, I go talk to the eye doctors and I was amazed the level
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  of care, the quality, the consideration, the way in which I was
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  treated by the staff was just incredible. And I talked to the eye doctor
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  said we got to dilate use so we can look and see what's going on
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  in the eye. And I'm calling in the retinologist. So she was away.
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  She came back in. Took about an hour for her to get back.
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  They kept boring different drops in my eye, like six different times to
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  dilated. Well. I start getting scans. I start going, you know,
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  one machine after in the next. The equipment was state of the art.
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  They had this thing called an oct scanner and that actually maps your retina.
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  And the doctor was extremely thorough And after all the tests were done,
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  she calls me in the office says, I got good news for you and
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  I got bad news. What do you want to hear first? I said,
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  give me the good news. So the good news is you don't have
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  a retinal detachment, which is really problematical. They can fix it, but
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  your vision will be impaired. So what you do have is a tear right
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  in that area where you had the tear the last time. Probably happened when
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  the fluid was detaching from the retina. And look, there's some blood vessels
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  there. I recommend laser surgery to you. And I looked at her,
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  I looked at all the equipment. The fact, you know, I'm very
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  knowledgeable about from a layperson standpoint about ophthalmological matters, having had experience with them
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  before, so I said for it. So takes me to a new I
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  guess it was an eggsmber laser spends about fifteen minutes zapping my retina, effectively
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  spot welding my retina back together onto the back of the eye. And it
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  was a little uncomfortable at times, but they had anesthetized the eye. And
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  you know, then after I get it done and I wait around for like
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  ten or fifteen minutes, I can't see anything because both of my pupils are
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  dilated and it's letting into all the light. So I had to wait around
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  for like fifteen twenty minutes till they closed up a little bit. Then I
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  took a taxi back to the hotel and then it was fine. I mean,
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  I've still got lurriness in the eye because the blood that seeped into the
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  fluid it's going to take a few weeks to two months to drain out,
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  and then there's some floaters those will eventually sink down to the bottom of the
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  eye as well as blood. But it was a scary thing. But what
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  it made me realize is, you know, the care that I received in
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  the hospital was every bit as good as the care that I've gotten in the
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  United States. You know, in this case, I wouldn't have had this
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  procedure done in a hospital. I would have gone to an eye clinic.
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  I have an ophthalmologist who I trust a lot. He is a former chief
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  resident at the Baskum Palmer Institute, which during its day still around but I
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  think at the time was the top I institute in the world. I knew
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  people that went there who are blind and literally walked out seeing So I would
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  have gone to him, and I will be going getting a follow up with
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  him when I get back next week. It's just it freaked me out.
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  But the fact is that they handled it like I said, would have been
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  done outpatient at a doctor's office. And that's it for now. We will
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  come back later. Thanks for listening to carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
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  solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot
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  com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,